Passengers queue for screening at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in early November last year. Kenya has exempted Ethiopia, Comoros, Congo-Brazzaville, Eritrea, Mozambique, San Marino and South Africa from eTA fees.
Kenya cancelled a multi-billion-shillings Adani-type deal that was aimed at electronically tracking all visitors at ports of entry like Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, dealing a blow to efforts of enhancing security at the country’s borders and airports.
Disclosures by the Public Private Partnership (PPP) Unit of the National Treasury show that the project, Next-Generation Integrated Border Management System, was silently cancelled in October last year.
The deal was privately initiated, like the botched one by Indian multinational Adani Group, where a private investor was to build the infrastructure and then recover the investment by charging user fees or having the government periodically pay for the platform.
Kenya is currently exposed to security threats largely due to porous borders with war-torn nations, underlining the need to roll out an automated system to track all visitors in order to boost surveillance at the borders.
The automated system was to include self-service passport control machines that use facial recognition technology to verify a traveller’s identity and exchange information with other units in real-time. The platform was also to include the Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) that replaced Visa from January last year.
“The project was cancelled in October 2024,” PPP Unit says in the disclosures which tracked the progress of all PPP projects as of December 31, 2024.
The new platform would bring together immigration, customs, border patrol and intelligence units setting the stage for real-time sharing of information, reduced waiting periods and an enhanced capacity to detect illicit trans-border activities.
The PPP Unit did not, however, disclose the reasons behind the cancellation of the much-hyped electronic platform that was to be used at all of the country’s points of entry including the airports.
The deal was cancelled at a time when Kenyans were making noise over the controversial manner in which the government had picked the Adani Group, owned by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, to expand the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and separately work on a mega power transmission project.
President William Ruto in November last year announced the cancellation of the deals with Adani, caving in to public pressure and a decision by the US to indict the businessman for bribery.
A vast chunk of the country’s borders, especially in Northern Kenya, are porous with few customs checkpoints, making entry of criminals easier.
Kenya had hoped to mirror other developed economies that use similar automated electronic systems to keep out foreigners keen to manipulate loopholes at the expansive borders to smuggle in illicit products like narcotics and arms.
Immigration Principal Secretary Julius Bitok had, while pushing for the platform mid-last year, said that the new system will be able to ‘track anybody who comes into the country, know which hotel they are going to live in, and is able to monitor their security as part of enhancing security while at the same time opening the country to visitors.
Kenya is grappling with porous borders that continue to raise concerns about the unrestricted entry of criminals from war-torn Somalia, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, amplifying the need to enhance restrictions at the borders.
“When we talk about integrated border management, we are looking at things like e-gates, Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA), facial recognition, and such other components, which will be able to help us manage our visitors,” Mr Bitok said last year.
Plans to roll out the electronic platform came months after the government revoked the Visa requirement for all visitors and replaced it with the eTA.
Under the eTA, visitors are required to apply for entry into Kenya 72 hours before arrival and pay $30 (Sh3,800 at prevailing exchange rates) for the eTA. East Africans were however exempted from this requirement.
The government mid this month removed the eTA for all African countries, except Somalia and Libya. Nationals of the two countries were locked out due to security threats back home.
